Top 10 Social Media Management Tools

HootSuite is the most popular social media management tool for people and businesses to collaboratively execute campaigns across multiple social networks like Facebook and Twitter from one web-based dashboard. Hootsuite has become an essential tool for managing social media, tracking conversations and measuring campaign results via the web or mobile devices. Hootsuite offers a free, pro and enterprise solution for managing unlimited social profiles, enhanced analytics, advanced message scheduling, Google Analytics and Facebook insights integration.My note: HS is worth considering because of the add-ons for Firefox and Chrome and the Hootlet
Notes from a phone conversation with Robert Fougner
Enterprise Development Representative | HootSuite
778-300-1850 Ex 4545 robert.fougner@hootsuite.com
Jeff Woods with SCSU Communications does NOT use HS, neither Tom Nelson with SCSU Athletics. Two options: HS Pro and HS Enterprise. HS Pro: $10/m. Allows two users and once per month statistical output. Up to 50 social media accounts (list under App Directory). 50 SM accounts can be used not only for dissemination of information or streamlining the reception and digestion of information, but also for analytics from other services (can include in itself even Google Analytics), as well as repository (e.g., articles, images etc.) on other cloud services (e.g. Dropbox, Evernote etc.). Adding any other user account costs additional $10/m and can keep going up, until the HS Enterprise option becomes more preferable.
HS has integration with most of the prominent SM tools
HS has social media coaches, who can help not only with the technicalities of using HS but with brainstorming ideas for creative application of HS
HS has HS University, which deals with classroom instructors.

Buffer is a smart and easy way to schedule content across social media. Think of Buffer like a virtual queue you can use to fill with content and then stagger posting times throughout the day. This lets you keep to a consistent social media schedule all week long without worrying about micro-managing the delivery times. The Bufferapp also provides analytics about the engagement and reach of your posts.My notes: power user -$10/m, business – $50/m. Like HS, it can manage several accounts of Twitter, FB, and LinkedIn, Does NOT support G+

What’s the difference between Hootsuite and Bufferapp?

Hootsuite provides a more complete solution that allows you to schedule updates and monitor conversations, whereas Buffer isn’t a dashboard that shows you other people’s content. However, Bufferapp has superior scheduling flexibility over Hootsuite because you can designate very specific scheduling times and change patterns throughout the week. Hootsuite recently introduced an autoschedule feature that automatically designates a scheduling time based on a projected best time to post. This can be effective to use, but doesn’t have the same flexibility as Buffer since you don’t really know when a post will be scheduled till after doing so. What’s the right solution for you? Many people use both Hootsuite (to listen) and Bufferapp (to schedule), including me, and it really depends on your posting needs. In my opinion though, if Hootsuite we’re to introduce more scheduling options this could spell trouble for Buffer! But then again, Buffer could be working on some cool new dashboard that would rival Hootsuite’s offering, time will only tell.

SocialOomph is a neat web tool that provides a host of free and paid productivity enhancements for social media. You can do a lot with the site which includes functions for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Plurk and your blog. There are a ton of useful Twitter features like scheduling tweets, tracking keyword, viewing mentions and retweets, DM inbox cleanup, auto-follow and auto-DM features for new followers. Social Oomph will auto-follow any new follower of yours on Twitter if you like, which could save you a ton of time if you normally like to reciprocate follows. Social Oomph is so effective at increasing social media productivity that I use the site every day but haven’t had any reason to actually log in there since last year!My notes: Canadian company. started with Twitter, expanded to FB and LIn and keeps expanding (blogs). Here are the Pro/Free/ features: http://www.bloggingwizard.com/social-oomph-review/
for the paid option only-submit social updates via email, blog posts. TweetCockPIT for managing several accounts, unlimited Twitter accounts. FB, LinkedIn
$27.26 Monthly http://blinklist.com/reviews/socialoomphHootsuite Vs SocialOomph http://bluenotetechnologies.com/2013/04/25/hootsuite-vs-socialoomph/ – FOR SO
Hootsuite Vs SocialOomph http://sazbean.com/2009/12/10/review-hootsuite-vs-socialoomph/ – FOR HS
More + reviews and features for SO – http://www.itqlick.com/Products/6643: As a start-up organisation, if you want to keep your cost low and manage social media, SocialOomph can be your best choice as you can use it for free for a stipulated time – see also the pros and cons

Tweetdeck is a web and desktop solution to monitor and manage your Twitter feeds with powerful filters to focus on what matters. You can also schedule tweets and stay up to date with notification alerts for new tweets. Tweetdeck, who was purchased by Twitter, is available for Chrome browsers, as well as Windows and Mac desktops. Recently they closed down their mobile apps to re-shift focus on the web and desktop platforms.My notes: I abandonded TD for HS about an year ago, because of the same problem: no mobile app. Also, TweetDeck deals only with Twitter accounts, not other social media

Tweepi is a unique management tool for Twitter that lets you flush unfollowers, cleanup inactives, reciprocate following and follow interesting new tweeps! The pro version allows you to do bulk follow/unfollow actions of up to 200 users at a time making it a pretty powerful tool for Twitter management.My notes: $7.99 for up to 100 followers and 14.99 for up to 200. Twitter only, but unique features, which the other SMT don’t have

Social Flow is an interesting business solution to watch real-time conversation on social media in order to predict the best times for publishing content to capture peak attention from target audiences. Some major publishers use Social Flow which includes National Geographic, Mashable, The Economist and The Washington Post to name a few. Social Flow offers a full suite of services that looks to expand audience engagement and increase revenue per customer. In addition to its Cadence and Crescendo precision products, SocialFlow conducts an analysis of social signals to help identify where marketers should spend money on Promoted Tweets, Promoted Posts and Sponsored Stories, extending the reach and engagement for Twitter and Facebook paid strategies.My notes: This tool is too advanced and commercial for entry level social media group such as LRS

Sproutsocial is a powerful management and engagement platform for social business. Sprout Social offers a single stream inbox designed to help you never miss a message, and tools to seamlessly post, colloborate and schedule messages to Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. The platform also has monitoring tools and rich analytics to help you visualize important metrics.My notes: shareware app (one month), $59/m for the cheapest (up to 20 profiles)
By far the most expensive, but also the most promising-looking

SocialBro helps businesses learn how to better target and engage with their audience on Twitter. It provides tools to browse your community and identify key influencers, determine when the best time to tweet is, track engagement and analyze your competitors. Socialbro analyzes the timelines of your followers to generate a report showing you when the optimal time to tweet is that would reach the maximum amount of followers for more retweets and replies.

Cowdbooster offers a set of no-nonsense social media analytics with suggestions and resources to boost your online engagement. The platform provides at-a-glance analytics, recommendations for engagement and timing, audience insights and content scheduling to optimize delivery.

Free version only allows for one Twitter account and one Facebook account : -

Upgrades allow for more accounts, but still only Twitter and Facebook (no other social media types) : –

No social media feed : –

Provides suggestions on when to post content based on when followers and friends are most active : +

Ricky here from Crowdbooster. I am a big fan of your entrepreneurial career. We are positioned a little bit differently from Hootsuite, and as far as doing the required daily management, you may still need to use Hootsuite. What we do well is making sense of the analytics, and giving you real-time feedback about how you can improve your content, timing, and engagement. We also do some of the listening for you so you don’t have to always stare at the firehose that Hootsuite brings to you, that way we can help give you some slack as far as knowing when influencers decide to follow you, etc. We work with bit.ly, not ow.ly just yet, but using bit.ly can help us look into your click data to suggest, for example, best places to curate your content.https://plus.google.com/+PaulAllen/posts/idKkZRdA5gX

10 ArgyleSocial

Identify and engage with more prospects, qualify and quantify better leads, and build and maintain stronger relationships by linking social media actions to the marketing platforms you’re already using.

12. Cyfe

13. GrabinBox

Not sure which social media tool you should choose? If you want an advanced platform with advanced features that can handle most of your accounts, you might want to opt for a paid membership to HootSuite or Crowdbooster. If you’d be fine with more basic features (which might be better for beginners with only a couple accounts to manage) GrabinBox might be a better fit for you.

My notes:

14. Google Reader

discontinued

My notes: App.Net and Plurk
Also, looking a the SMMTools, one can acquire a clear picture what is trending as social media tools (just by seeing what is allowed to be handled): Twitter, FB, LinkedIn.